1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates generally to a host device and method to set a distributed printing. More particularly, the present general inventive concept relates to a host device to set a distributed printing to generate a workflow to print the same document at a plurality of image forming apparatuses, and a distributed printing setup method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a system using an image forming apparatus having a printing function and a web server, a plurality of host devices generally shares a plurality of image forming apparatuses over a network. With advances of communication technology, a document delivery system is being developed.
In a conventional system, a user manages the image forming apparatuses by accessing to a server or using a program separately installed to a user terminal. That is, the user requests an operation supported by the system using the server or the user terminal including the separate program.
The operation supported by the system includes ‘Scan to printer’ by way of example. By accessing the server, the user generates and stores a workflow ‘Scan to printer’ in advance and then requests the stored ‘Scan to printer’. When ‘Scan to printer’ is requested, the image forming apparatus scans the placed document, converts the scanning data to a printable format, and prints the data on printing media. In doing so, the printing on the printing media is performed only at one of the image forming apparatuses. For instance, when the scanning data is printed on 100 or 1000 sheets of paper, the printing job is performed only by one apparatus. As a result, the conventional printing method causes a load to the designated image forming apparatus and the user has to wait for a long time to acquire the prints.